


Twelfth Time's the Charm

by orphan_account



Category: The Grand Tour (TV) RPF, Top Gear (UK) RPF
Genre: AU, Biological Weapons, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Evil Genius James May, Evil Schemes, shameless crack, that's a thing now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-17 01:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14177157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: James keeps trying to destroy the world and Richard and Jeremy are really un-philosophical about it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're off! Posting this shit 'cause why the heck not.

“So!” Richard said brightly, settling into the passenger’s seat of Jeremy’s Mercedes with a backpack in one hand and a shotgun in the other, “What d’ya reckon it’ll be today?”

“Hmm?” Jeremy replied, putting both a sledgehammer and a ball-peen hammer in the back seat, “Honestly, Richard, I’ve no idea. He’s been pretty good at keeping us guessing.”

It took some fiddling around until they were both comfortable, but before long, both men were rolling down the smooth stretch of road a little faster than was strictly legal, away from their offices and hellbent for Hammersmith.

Richard scratched at his chin. “This is the fifth day in a row he hasn’t turned up for work. You did tell Andy-?”

“Yes. In fact, I told him, and then he handed me the full kit you have there. I’m very glad he managed to nick it from the old Top Gear office, lord knows what we’d do without it.”

Richard just nodded, unzipping said kit to check that everything was there. Teabags, painkillers, kitty treats, Sarah’s phone number, biscuits, handcuffs, and a bottle of wine. Oh, and shells for his shotgun. The full kit was all there, and Richard zipped it back up with a satisfied nod.

“Did we ever figure out what May’s deal was about all of this? I mean, really now. He’s a perfectly good chap, nice, polite, and oh yeah, he likes to make doomsday devices in his spare time. And he’s trained as a pianist. I just don’t get it, Jez.”

Jeremy shrugged helplessly. “There’s nothing to get. I suppose we could ask him after we’ve gotten him restrained. Although I suspect he’ll be a bit cranky having his master plan spoiled when it was only hours from fruition. _Again.”_

Richard nodded in agreement. “I just wish he’d make his bloody mind up whether he wants to destroy the world or take it over. He keeps flip-flopping and it’s a bit disconcerting. I swear, one of these days we’re going to have his door down and find he’s built a nuke and a mind-control ray or something and is busy flipping a coin to decide which one he’s going to fire off.”

“Wouldn’t mind the mind-control ray myself, as long as he let me have a go with it. There’s quite a few things I’d do to Piers Morgan, I tell you that much.”

They drove in silence for a few more minutes, Richard pulling some shells for the shotgun out of his pocket and looking them over. Twelve-gauge, great. Just perfect for pounding his shoulder into a paste.

“I’m still wondering about that antimatter bomb he did a few years back, if I’m honest,” Richard said, “I mean…you destroyed it with a _hammer,_ Jez. I did a little googling when I got home from that and I found out that antimatter explodes violently on contact with normal matter- any kind of normal matter. At all. Including your hammer. How you managed to neutralize it without levelling London, I have no idea.”

Jeremy just smirked and looked smug, prompting Richard to groan in frustration.

* * *

  


As they were pulling into Hammersmith, the two men were still arguing.

“-No, Jez. He’s not _genocidal._ Genocide is when you want to kill a specific group of people for whatever stupid and horrible reason. Like if I wanted to kill everyone who drove a Prius-“

“-Which is incidentally a fine idea, and I hope James pulls his head out of his arse and gets on that-“

“- _That_ would qualify as genocide. I think. Look, my point is, James isn’t _genocidal,_ he’s a _megalomaniac.”_

“There’s a difference?”

“…Well, I mean- Yeah? He’s not just trying to kill everyone on pedal bikes or everyone who drives a Merc. There’s a word for wanting to kill everybody and not just some people, I’m sure. Hang on, I’ll google it. You drive.”

“Like I haven’t been for the last twenty minutes?”

“Shut up! You know what I mean.”

Richard tapped into his phone a bit.

“Omnicide. The word we’re looking for is Omnicide. He’s _omnicidal,_ which I guess is better than genocidal.”

“He’s probably not either of those. It IS a Tuesday, so he’s probably working on world domination instead. All the more reason to stop him.”

“…He really would look incredibly silly in a crown, wouldn’t he? God, can you _imagine…”_

“I can imagine, and it keeps me up at night, because I’m sure you and I would be the first to the gulags in May’s Britain. We’re almost there, by the way. Might want to load up your gun.”

Richard nodded and started loading some of the bastard twelve-gauge shells into the gun, trying to keep the tip of the break-action shotgun down so the police wouldn’t pull them over. Between the guns, the black clothes, and the hammers, it did look quite a bit like Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson were off to do something absolutely heinous. Ironic, since that was precisely what they were trying to stop.

“Alright,” Jeremy said, “Ten quid says he’s trying to kill every human on earth except _maybe_ his parents, siblings, and girlfriend.”

Richard smirked. “I’ll take that bet. Ten quid says he’s trying to enslave the human race.”

Jeremy took one hand off the wheel for long enough to shake on it, and by that point, they were almost up to James’ street.

“What hasn’t he tried yet?” Richard wondered aloud, “Drugs? Poison? Did the chemtrails thing count as poison, or what was his plan there?”

“If I recall, it was, quote, “inspired by those loons who think chemtrails are real”. And then he started cackling like a madman, but you knew that already. I think he was going to actually taint the petrol supply in Britain with some kind of mind-altering something that’d come out in the exhaust.”

“Ah, yes, now I remember. We still had the cricket bat, then.”

“Yes. Shame it broke on his countertop.”

“And whose fault was that?”

Jeremy just huffed indignantly, pulling up in a parking space near to James’s home. He killed the ignition and pulled the key, and both men sat in silence, listening to the snapping and popping as the engine cooled.

“Right then!” Richard said, getting unbuckled and popping the door, hopping onto the street with the backpack and the gun. Much, much faster than Jeremy, of course.

They were all getting too old for this shit. That didn’t seem to be stopping James, though. His plans had just gotten larger, grander, and more deranged as the years had gone by. And, more frighteningly, closer to success each and every time.

Jeremy mused on that for a few seconds as he clambered out of the Merc and retrieved his hammers, slamming the doors and locking it up.

“Plan’s the same as usual, I assume?” Richard said, “No point in checking the house, he’ll still be in his shed, welding up the body of his nuke or, like, experimenting with implants on a monkey or something. He usually is.”

Jeremy nodded. “Of course. Shed, slap the idiot, tie him up until he calms down, use the gun and the hammers to carefully destroy whatever his latest project is, and then once he’s stopped acting like a lunatic, we all go down for a pint. Perfectly simple.”

Richard nodded, and the two of them strolled up to James’s home, going around the side and lifting the latch on the gate. The backyard was well-kept and furnished simply, with a few scant beds that hadn’t grown flowers for a good many years. The shed, however, was their main focus. A simple affair, four wooden walls and a peaked roof, a simple door with a latch on it and some plain windows.

A typical, cute little English shed.

Jeremy and Richard knew better. Some of the things James had attempted to do in that shed were pretty close to pure evil.

“I honestly don’t know what he was thinking, that time he decided he could refine uranium in there,” Richard said as Jeremy undid the latch, “Like, really? What was he _smoking,_ to make him think that was a good idea? He’s lucky there wasn’t a massive nuclear accident. What did he even do with the Uranium, anyway?”

Jeremy pushed the door open and shrugged. “No idea. I will agree, though: Not our colleague’s finest hour. Anyway.”

He stepped into the darkened shed and schooled his facial features into a suitably annoyed expression.

“James, you pillock! We’re here to stop whatever dastardly nonsense you’re up to this time.” He said into the blackness, tone not exactly impressive but very much irate.

Richard quirked an eyebrow as he followed Jeremy in. The shed was still dark, and the seconds were ticking by. James did like a bit of theatre when he got like this (evil laughter notwithstanding, that was practically a symptom in its own right) but this was looking less like a dramatic pause and more like an empty shed.

“Jeremy,” Richard said, voice very, very quiet, “I don’t think he’s in here.”

Both men paused to consider this.

If James wasn’t in this shed…then…

Were they too late?

They were never too late. Ever. These things always followed a script, almost; James didn’t show up for work for five days, they went into his shed, he was almost but not quite done his latest heinous creation. They stopped him, laughed at his stupidity, smacked some sense into him, and all went for a pint.

Jeremy scowled and fumbled around until he found the lightswitch, a process that involved much crashing and banging and knocking over of antique motorbikes and misplacement of spanners.

“Yeah, that’s…that’ll make him real happy, Jez…” Richard muttered as the lights flicked on and revealed that half of James’s carefully-arranged tools were knocked off their pegs and scattered around the floor.

“And I really don’t care. Come on out, James, you bastard. We know you’re in here somewhere!” Jeremy thundered, looking around the room for any sign of his co-presenter.

Nothing.

It was just an empty shed.

As Jeremy started stumbling around looking in drawers (for, presumably, James’s conscience). Richard noticed something on the floor near the door. It was a cardboard box, but that wasn’t what caught Richard’s eye.

The box in question had a biohazard symbol stamped across it, quite prominently.

“…Ah.” Richard said quietly, “That…that poses a few problems.”

“What’s a problem?” Jeremy asked, finding one small drawer on a shelf that was particularly stubborn. He grunted and yanked on it, only for something on the other side of the room to CLUNK into place. There was a horrible sound of concrete scraping against steel, and then-

Both men looked over to the other side of the shed, eyes agog, to see a hole had opened up in the floor of the simple little shed in Hammersmith. Lights flicked on down the hole, illuminating a ladder going down a shaft.

“He’s down there.” Jeremy announced, dropping both his hammers down the hole. This produced two resonant CLANGS, both of which made Richard wince. Something about this whole situation was starting to make him very, very nervous.

“Jeremy. Stop.” Richard said, getting in between his larger colleague and the hole, “There’s an empty box over there with the biohazard symbol on it. I don’t know what James has done this time, but like- There could be- I don’t know. Black Death down there. Ebola. I don’t know what he’s done, but this- I don’t think he’s messing around this time.”

Jeremy paused to consider this.

“…You don’t think he’d be daft enough to give biological weapons a try….do you?” Jeremy said quietly, “He’s not _that_ insane. Surely he’s not. That- That could kill him too.”

“And us, and his girlfriend, and his family, and his friends, and-“ Richard was actually starting to get a bit worried now. If James really was down there, monkeying around with some kind of biohazard,  Jeremy was the last human being on earth that should be going down that hole. Especially while he was swinging his hammers around.

“Alright,” Richard said sharply, straightening up to take charge, “You’re staying up here. I’m going to go down there and- I’ll just have a look. If he’s down there, I’ll- I’ll pistol-whip some sense into him and drag him out of there. If I get AIDS splattered on me, I’ll lock the door. If I’m not back in ten minutes, call the army.”

“And I’m not going down because…?”

“Jeremy. They usually like to keep diseases in little glass and plastic containers in delicate cases. You brought not one but _two_ hammers, specifically designed for demolishing things.”

Jeremy sighed. “Well, at least while you’re down there, hand me up my hammers before you go and inhale whatever super-pneumonia James has cooked up.”

“Lazy old bastard…” Richard muttered to himself as he descended the ladder, gun already slung across his back by the strap. It was kind of pressing the backpack into him, but whatever, it was just a momentary thing anyway.

His feet hit the concrete at the bottom of the shaft, and Richard took a few seconds to hand Jeremy up his blasted hammers before turning his attention to the task at hand.

He turned the wheel on the door in front of him, swallowing nervously at the massive yellow biohazard symbol stencilled with typical Jameslike precision on the door. It swung inwards, and some more lights flicked on.

Revealing a small room with a bench and a pair of weird, puffy rubber suits with Perspex face screens and oxygen tanks. Protective clothing meant to be worn in the lab at all times. On the other side of the tiny enclave was yet another door, this one with a glass window showing a large shower for decontamination, and another window beyond that showing a faint view of a lab with the lights turned off.

Richard Hammond was not a stupid man. And he decided it would be a very, very wise idea to _get the everloving fuck out of there_ before he got AIDSbolapox.

“Jezza!” he called, “The lights are off down here. I don’t think anyone’s home.”

“Did you go in the lab?”

“Um, no? It’s pretty involved down here, mate. He’s got suits and showers and three layers of steel between the outside world and whatever the fuck it is he’s breeding down here. I’m not going in that lab, and that’s final.” Richard said, backpedalling out of there and slamming the door behind him.

He climbed the ladder frantically, gun in one hand, rucksack still slung over his back as he reached the top.

“So,” Jeremy said, “He’s lost it completely, then. It’s some kind of a disease, isn’t it?”

“Don’t know,” Richard said, “And I don’t want to know. But there’s two suits down there and the lights in the lab are off, so I don’t think he’s here.”

Jeremy just nodded.

“Alright, fine. Let’s go check the house, then.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things start to get serious....

James, for all his pretentions toward eye-swivelling lunacy, still kept the spare key to his house under the flowerpot.

Jeremy unlocked the door and pushed it open with a thunderous bang, dropping his ball-peen hammer at the door and stomping into the house with Mister Sledgehammer very much at the ready. Richard trailed in after him, gun up and at the ready.

Jeremy opened his mouth to thunder something out, only to be stopped by Richard putting a hand on his arm.

Music.

Classical music.

And James was humming along.

They both crept into the kitchen, watching as James swayed slowly to the beat dictated by his tunes. He was drinking something from a glass, amber liquid sipped carefully; scotch, probably. Standing by his kitchen table, looking out his window; his free hand was scratching at Fusker’s back, the cat contentedly purring for once in its miserable life.

Richard and Jeremy looked at each other. This…wasn’t how things normally went down.

James- they were always in time to stop him. Always.

“Afternoon, Clarkson. Hammond. Had fun in my shed, did you? If you messed with my tools, you’re  really going to regret it.” James said, his voice sounding calm and conversational. Like he’d been doing nothing more than slacking off work to drink booze and listen to classical music for the last five days.

Like the threat at the end wasn’t actually a threat.

“James- James you absolute fucking _pillock._ Biological warfare, really? Really? That’s _insane,_ even by your standards. What the fuck are you doing, man!?” Jeremy thundered, tightening his grip on the sledgehammer and seriously debating cracking James’ skull.

James took another sip of his scotch and turned around, smiling at his two colleagues. It was a perfectly calm and reasonable smile, betrayed by his eyes.  He was looking at them like they were insects he was about to impale with a pin, stick them to a corkboard through their chests and keep them in a glass case. Label them carefully with scientific names; _Hammondi_ _and Clarksonia,_ _collected in Hammersmith._

“Would you like a drink, Jeremy?” James said, not answering the question.

Richard, for his part, had looped back around to being scared again. This was- this was like the very first time they’d done this, where they’d kicked James’s door down in a panic, seen him fussing with something that looked like a timing system for a bomb, bags of fertilizer-

It had been terrifying. The terror had worn off after awhile, like a piece of gum being chewed too long- but this, here, was unknown territory, shaky ground indeed. Jeremy and himself didn’t know what they were doing. And James did. James knew exactly what was going on, had all the cards in his hand, knew every move they were about to make-

“Sure.” Jeremy said, lowering the sledgehammer, glaring at James. “I’ll have a drink if you’re offering it, May.” 

“Hammond? Would you like one?”

“Y-yeah. Sure. I’ll- what are we having?”

“Scotch. I was going to have wine, but, well. I had a feeling I might have a little pikey barging into my house in the next few hours.” James’ tone wasn’t nice at all. The words were all correct, but there was something cold in it, in his posture, and it made Richard shudder a little.

James went to go and get some glasses from the cupboard, leaving the table exposed and revealing a red button in the middle of a small panel of control switches. Cables for it snaked off the table, disappearing into large machines on the floor on the other side. There were a few lights blinking on the sides of it, but for the most part, all the lights were red instead of green. Something about that was comforting; like whatever that button did, he hadn’t pushed it yet.

Hopefully.

Jeremy leaned over to Richard and did his very best to whisper as quietly as possible.

_“I’ll distract him. You get over there and destroy that button before he gets a chance to press-“_

“I can hear you, you know.” James said, the sound of scotch sloshing out of the bottle and into the glasses, just enough to mix with water and ice.

Jeremy straightened up. “I wasn’t-“

“You were. I suppose I should probably tell you that any attempts to tamper with my button will result in the signal being sent to the cars regardless. There is a kill switch, but sadly for you, to trigger it, you will quite literally have to pull it off my dead body.”

James turned around and fished a key out of his shirt; it was tied to a string around his neck, like a necklace, and he let it drop back inside the folds of fabric. That done, he walked back to his two erstwhile friends with a glass of scotch in each hand.

Both men took their glasses and stared at James. Richard was starting to twitch uncomfortably, unsure of what he was supposed to do. He still had a gun, maybe- but- he couldn’t shoot James. He couldn’t shoot his friend. Not for real. Not- not even when he was like this. They just had to- to foil whatever his current scheme was, tie him up, calm him down, get a few pints in him-

Right?

“I owe you two some thanks, you know,” James said, voice sounding almost…fond. “And I’m not talking about all the good times we’ve had together. No, no. Certainly I’m glad for those, but what I never have been able to thank you properly for is all the constructive criticism you’ve been able to offer me, in stopping a few more of my harebrained schemes. I must say, I am genuinely glad for you two fools barging in and stopping me before I could pull the trigger and make a terrible mistake.”

At that, both Richard and Jeremy’s shoulders sagged in relief. That last sentence sounded _almost_ sane and rational-

“After all, what would my earlier schemes have accomplished? A few thousand dead and me in prison. That simply wouldn’t do. You pushed me to dream…bigger. To make something…truly _global._ So I have. This is the final iteration of my plan, chaps. A choice for the world. Either I get what I want, or everyone dies. Simple as that.”

HA HA HA _NOPE._

“James,” Richard said softly, “What in god’s name did you _do!?”_

James smiled. It was not a nice smile.

“I’ve gone to the trouble of handcrafting a disease, Hammond. Not _terribly_ difficult, once you get the right equipment. Just…dangerous. For me. But once I had the disease, the obvious course of action was to develop a vaccine for it, correct? So I have. I have the cure, I have the disease…now imagine what people would be willing to pay, to give up, to _do,_ just to save their own sorry hides when everyone around them is dropping like flies.”

“Oh my god.” Richard whispered, eyes wide. Jeremy said nothing. Just stared at the man he called his friend with a look of horror and disgust.

James’s smile ratcheted up in size a few notches, and it looked almost mechanical how it spread across his face. It was a genuinely unsettling smile; half to show sick delight and half showing teeth.

“Now then. I’m sure you’re both very keen to stop me. Be the heroes and save the day. And I’d like to ask you both: Why?” James took another sip of his scotch, an ice-cold glint in his eyes.

“Why **what?”** Jeremy echoed, narrowing his eyes and tightening his grip on his hammer. His mind was racing- he needed to get May away from that button without causing the end of the world or killing his friend. And to do that- an idea occurred to Jeremy, and he resolved to put it in action right away.

“Why do you want to stop me so badly?” James said, “Because you see, I’ve been doing some thinking, lads. I thought and I thought and I decided that If I’m going to rule the world, it’d be a bloody good idea if I didn’t go it alone. So I thought it might be a bit of a laugh if I extended an offer to you two. Here’s my offer: lay down your weapons, finish your drinks, come over here, and we’ll all press this button together. We’ll take this world over together.”

“Ah. Well. I can explain why I’m not going to do that, and it’s pretty simple: I have kids.” Richard said, “You know. So does Jeremy. And I’d rather they not die from whatever super-AIDS you’ve concocted-“

James put his drink down and held up a finger to stop Richard in his tracks, keeping one hand close to his button of doom.

“Yes, yes. I know. Fathers and their children and all that. I have a good many doses of the vaccine ready to go, you know. Your families could all be immunized before the day was out. So that excuse isn’t going to fly, Hammond. Anything else?”

 “I mean- it’s- it’s wrong?” he argued, hesitantly, “You’re completely fucking crazy and it’s pure evil to let you do this?”

“Right…Wrong…they’re just words, Hammond. Words coined by weaker men who haven’t got the stones to attempt the truly world-changing. And look at the state of the world right now, why don’t you? It’s a mess. And I do hate a mess.”

“If this doesn’t work,” Jeremy butted in with a growl, “If the governments of the world decide not to play ball, you’re going to prison, May. You’re going to prison and an awful lot of people are going to die, I’m sure. And the thing is,” Jeremy here stopped to take a breath, “I happen to rather like the world as it is. It’s where I keep all my stuff.”

James snorted.

“Eloquent as always, Clarkson. I can’t exactly argue with that logic. But my offer still stands.”

Richard took a deep breath and pressed the butt of the gun to his shoulder, holding it up. He was trembling- James could see the end of the barrel shaking, could see the hesitation in those brown eyes, and he just smiled nastily at his friend. Debated taunting him. Knowing that Richard would never be able to pull that trigger and live with the consequences of his actions.

“Get-Get away from that button.” Richard said, trying for forceful and ending up with nervous and shaky. Not exactly a commanding tone. He- he had to do this, but he just flat couldn’t. Blood and gore and guts and _he wasn’t a killer, not for real, not in reality where it wasn’t a joke and James wouldn’t be fine in the next take-_

“Hammond,” Jeremy said, and at this the younger man looked up at his one-time idol, “Put the gun down.”

Silence filled the kitchen for several agonizing seconds after that little bombshell. Richard met Jeremy’s gaze, eyes wide-

Jeremy winked at him. Moved his face as little as possible, just winked the one eye that was farthest away from James, helpfully hidden from the lunatic by Jeremy’s nose.

Richard was afraid and confused. The wink didn’t help, but-did he trust Jeremy? Well…yes. Yes, he did. Not that he’d ever admit it. But he did, somewhere deep inside of him, trust that giant, pompous, thundering prick.

Richard lowered the gun, slowly, looking between Jeremy and James. There was a flat expression on the former and the smuggest fucking face on the latter.

“Bastards. You’re both bastards.” Richard muttered, “What do you want me to do, Jez? What? Do you want me to just lay the gun down?” He looked up at his friend, at the man he used to idolize at one (long-distant) point in his life, and very much wanted to break his nose. Just smash Jeremy’s face in, and then grab James and smash his head against the table, and then drink all the alcohol in the house and pass out, because _fuck everything._

“Unload it.” Jeremy said flatly, “Take the shells out.” He turned to look James dead in the eyes, lowering the sledgehammer to the floor, slowly, reluctantly.

The smile on James’s face was just massive and very, very unsettling. It showed a twisted delight that made Richard shudder. He snapped the break-action shotgun open and removed both the shells, letting them drop to the floor and closing the gun back up. There was a soft _thump_ on the hardwood- Jeremy had put the sledgehammer down and let it fall over, handle now resting against the wood.

And then the tall bastard marched right up next to James, taking up the space to his right, free hand still holding the damn scotch, taking a sip- his first sip. Richard had put his scotch on the floor, and one of the shells had landed in it.

 _It’s poisoned,_ he thought hysterically, _it’s poisoned or it’s drugged or something. James is absolutely not going to share shit when he’s like this. Jez’s lost his fucking mind, and I’m the last sane man on earth-_

“Coming, Hammond?” Jeremy asked, looking back at his youngest colleague, and once again, winking the eye that James couldn’t see from his perspective. Jez had come over all stoic, and that was almost as creepy as James teetering on the edge of lunacy, Richard decided. Jeremy was not a man who should ever do emotionless, ever.

James put his scotch down with a clink on the table, one of his hands going down to stuff in his pocket. His shirt wasn’t tucked in for some fucking reason, some small part of Richard’s brain noted; It looked just plain dumb, unless- he was hiding something?

Richard stooped down to pick up his scotch, the shotgun shell still floating in it, and walked over to them slowly. He was still holding the empty and useless gun in his hands, mind racing. Jeremy’s face wasn’t giving away _shit,_ and James looked like he was about to start vibrating with excitement.

Once Richard was standing right next to him, the chuckling started.  High and keening, like nails on a chalkboard in terms of how pleasant it was to listen to.

He and Jeremy had speculated in the past why James started laughing when he got like this; Jeremy said it was because he was a nutter, but Richard suspected it had a lot more to do with relieving tension. Either way, James’s giggles were one of the many, many things that kept Richard up at night, and now he had a fresh reminder of what _that_ fucking sounded like.

Not good. Not good at all. It was different from the kind of laugh James had when he heard a good joke or something funny happened; a special sort of laugh exclusively reserved for this lunacy. Right now it was just quiet chuckling, and Richard _really, really, really_ wanted it to stop.

“You’ve barely touched your drinks,” James said after a moment, managing to regain his composure, and that just set off a few dozen extra alarm bells in Richard’s head. It was drugged. It was absolutely drugged. With something. Probably cyanide. Or rohypnol, or, or, or like…powdered anthrax. Anthrax was a powder, right…?

Richard set the drink down on the table and did his best to smile at James.

“I, ah, I think I’ll- I’ll drink it after. After we push the button. To, ah, to celebrate.” He said with his best fake smile, honed through decades of work in front of television cameras.

James wasn’t buying it.

“Drink your scotch, Hammond. You as well, Clarkson. Finish them.” He said, voice getting a whole lot nastier. The earlier joy vanished from his face, and it was a staring contest now- brown eyes locking onto blue.

“Or what, May?” Richard said, feeling the urge to just clobber James into submission and then run screaming into the street. He wasn’t gonna give in that easily.

James turned to look right at Richard, turning his back to Jeremy. There was something in those ice-blue eyes that shook Richard straight to his core, but he didn’t have much time to contemplate it, because at that precise moment, Jeremy lunged.

It wasn’t a move with any kind of finesse or training behind it. Jeremy just wrapped one arm around James’s neck and one around his arms and yanked him away from the table with a grunt, struggling to control the thrashing, shouting man fighting him every step of the way.

“HAMMOND! HELP ME, YOU FUCKING- **OUCH!** FUCK OFF, MAY!” Jeremy howled, as James succeeded in working one of his arms free enough to jab Jeremy in the side.

Richard still had the gun in his hands, and an idea winked into his brain. It wasn’t any good as a firearm in that precise instant, but it was a large, heavy object in the shape of a club. He spun it around, gripping it tight by the barrel, and bounded into the fray. And just in the nick of time, because James had managed to thrash both of his arms free, one of them aiming wildly for Jeremy’s head and the other-

James’s shirt rucked up, hands flailing far away from his waist, and Richard got a good, long look at a leather scabbard attached to his belt. Slid into it was a four-inch knife, mercifully nowhere near James’s hands at that precise moment, but- Richard panicked. The words were out of his mouth before he could even think about them.

“JEZ, THAT’S- KNIFE! HE’S GOT A-“

It came out choppy and scrambled and Jeremy got the message, shoving James away from himself and more importantly, away from the damn button. But that still meant that James was suddenly unrestrained, and- Fuck!

Richard lunged while James was still trying to regain his balance, swinging his gun like a sword, holding back just a smidgen, hoping against hope he didn’t really break anything-

It connected with a sickening thud but mercifully no crunch, slamming into James’s side and finally pitching him off-balance and sending the long-haired idiot tumbling onto the floor. Richard didn’t waste any time; he let the gun fall from his fingers and jumped on top of his lunatic friend. Grabbed both his wrists and held the fuck on, desperately trying to keep a man much larger than himself pinned to the ground.

This was Jeremy’s goddamn job. Jeremy was the one who usually kept May pinned and in a headlock until he calmed the fuck down. As it presently stood, Richard had no idea where the giant ape had fucked off to; all he knew was that there was a large man three inches from his face and staring into his eyes with a look of sheer, unbridled hatred.

James was saying something and it presumably wasn’t very nice. Richard wasn’t entirely sure, because he wasn’t listening; too busy trying to keep the crotchety old bastard pinned to his own floor for long enough to get him restrained and calm him the fuck down.

**_“JEREMY, HELP-“_ **

The knee connected with Richard’s crotch hard enough to make him see stars. James threw him off in that instant, Richard rolling away and trying to get himself back into sorts. He forced himself to stand up, still sore and in pain, and James was-

Pinned to the floor. By Jeremy, who had a death grip on the younger man’s wrists, pinning them above his head and using his bulk to keep the lunatic in place. Based on the handcuffs currently resting on the floor, the big ape had gone off to get their supplies.

Richard scooped up the handcuffs and sank down to get James cuffed, pulling out the key and stuffing it into his pocket. And then, exhausted, he sat back on his heels, wanting nothing more than to just go to the pub and have a pint.

Could he, pretty please, have the sane James back?

 _“Hammond,”_ Jeremy grunted, **_“The fucking button is still live.”_**

Richard sighed, reaching between his two colleagues-

…and realizing that he was going to have to either unbutton James’s shirt or just shove his arm in there and go spelunking for it. Neither was terribly appealing at that precise moment. Oh well, needs must and all that.

Richard opted to just shove his hand in there and start feeling around for the key, which proved to be one of the worst ideas he’d had all week. James was all hot and sweaty and sticky and the key was just fucking nowhere to be found. And to top it off, James was still thrashing around underneath Jeremy, and just-

Unbuttoning his shirt was a much, much better idea. It took a few seconds to get the top three buttons undone, but at that point he’d sighted the cord and yanked the entire makeshift necklace off his erstwhile mate without much more fuss.

Before he pissed off to go and shut the button down, there was also the small matter of the knife. Which meant Richard had to stick his hand in a small space right by both of his co-presenter’s crotches. Just fucking wonderful. Jeremy was sure to say some shit about homosexualists after this. A few mumbled apologies and some swearing later, he had the knife in his hand, and Richard flung it somewhere far, far away from them, hearing a THUNK as it speared itself into a wall and stuck there.

With that, Richard skipped away from the two of them, half-hearing the start of some kind of conversation as he booked it to the kitchen table.

There were five lights on the side of the button, he noted as he got closer. Five LED’s, all showing the colour red. Now, James being James, there was absolutely no reason for him to have those five lights on there unless it was vitally important to something.

Why would there be _five_ lights? What the hell was this button connected to?

Richard picked the button up with trembling hands, careful to not loosen any of the cables. The big red button was the most prominent feature, but there were a couple of other switches- and a keyhole. A keyhole that looked like the ignition for a car.

Richard reached down to stick the key into the ignition-

_Wait a fucking second._

James May presented a goddamn _car show._

Richard looked down at the keyhole in the top of the unit and wondered why the fuck the kill switch would be the ignition for a car- and more importantly, why James would bother showing them the key to shut down the unit at all.

He looked at the key-

It was a Toyota key, he noted dimly. The hole on the switchboard was an ignition socket.

Richard carefully put the unit back down, afraid to touch anything, and walked back to the other two, still on the floor in the same position they had been. James had stopped thrashing, thank Christ; he was just panting on the floor, now, looking anywhere but at Jeremy.

Alright. He was starting to calm down, then. It always used to be like this. But this go-around was so wildly different from the norm that Richard didn’t even know for sure anymore.

“James,” He said, crouching by the man’s head and holding up the key, “What’s the ACTUAL shutdown for the button?”

James just smiled up at him. Not nastily, just…amused.

“Well, Hammond. Looks like you’re not as daft as I thought.”

Richard scowled.

“Will you quit being an arse and just tell me what the actual shutdown is? You lied. I know you lied. You wanted me to turn the key, because that’s the actual starter, isn’t it?”

“What if I don’t want to tell you?”

Richard closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and took a deep breath.

“Get my sledgehammer and smash up his piano,” Jeremy grunted. There was a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead; for a guy who hated manual labour, the job of holding down a violently struggling James was probably the most physically demanding task he’d done all month.

James gawked at that, and Richard just nodded, getting up and walking over to where the hammer had hit the floor. It was pretty heavy, a huge steel head and a long wooden handle, but Richard was able to lift it and prop it up on his shoulder.

He walked back across the floor, boots tap-tap-tapping on James’s hardwood (Neither of them had taken off their goddamn shoes in the house, he noted dimly) and walked back to where James was once again struggling, but for very different reasons.

“DON’T YOU _DARE,_ HAMMOND-“ his eyes were wild with terror instead of rage, and this time it was Richard’s turn to smirk. Oh, turning the tables felt _sooooo_ good.

“Then you’re going to tell us exactly what that button does, where it goes, and how I shut it down,” Richard said, schooling his face from a smirk into a scowl, “Because we’re going to have to clean up _your_ bloody mess here, May.  Your gigantic, world-ending mess. So start talking, or _the piano gets it.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey. Guys. Anyone out there? Anyone reading this? Let me know your thoughts.


	3. Chapter 3

 Richard stared at James, unsure whether to explode in rage or just keep staring at the ballsy motherfucker.

“Let me get this straight,” Richard said flatly, putting the sledgehammer down so he could convey his fury with his hands, “You turned **ARMAGEDDON** into **_A CHEAP CAR CHALLENGE?!”_**

“Yes?” James said, sitting up and shrugging his shoulders, like it was the most natural thing in the world, “The idea of creating an illness, Hammond, is that you’re going to spread it. I already had a gaseous delivery system designed from that time I tried to tamper with the nation’s petrol supply, so I just used that. All I needed was something that would blend in and be inconspicuous in downtown London.”

“So you bought five used cars, cheap, on the internet.” Richard said, eyes wild. “What fucking year is it, Jeremy!? Are we off to Bolivia!? The Middle East?! OH NO, WAIT, WE’RE IN THE HOUSE OF A LUNATIC WHO LIVES IN HAMMERSMITH AND THOUGHT THAT A SILLY IDEA FOR A TV PROGRAMME WAS ALSO A GREAT WAY TO BRING ABOUT _THE **EXCTINCTION** OF THE **HUMAN RACE.”**_

James turned to Jeremy, who still had a death grip on his arm, and raised an eyebrow.

“Is there a problem with me using cheap cars for the job, Hammond? It’s a perfectly sound plan. Nothing too showy, a bunch of inconspicuous saloons where you can’t see in the boot. I moored them up in some strategic spots, locked them, paid for a week’s parking, and sodded off home to wait for everyone to leave work.”

“Fuck off, May. Now I gotta- we gotta find five utterly unremarkable cars in the _middle of London,_ get them back to here without getting mobbed by the paps or getting infected by- god, just…FUCK!” Richard interrupted his own rant with a cuss, taking a deep breath.

“We don’t have time for this. Jez, you- Just- don’t let him go anywhere. I’ll ransack his office and see if there’s anything that could tell us where he parked those bloody cars. And I’ll call Andy and get some backup. Get that smug look off your face, May. Your little scheme that you’ve got going here? Yeah, it’s not going to work, and it’s really, really starting to piss me off. I had PLANS for tonight and now I’ve got to cancel on all of them just to keep the LUNATIC I call my mate out of the FUCKING CLINK-“

Richard stomped away as he continued to rant, slamming the door of James’s office behind him. They could still hear the smaller man yelling and shouting at nothing in particular, the stress and frustration of their earlier tilt catching up to him. There was the sound of slamming and crashing and banging, and finally it was all still as Richard settled down to do a thorough search of the office.

“…Of all the things to tip him over the edge,” James said incredulously, “It was the fact that I bought a bunch of cheap cars on the internet.” He shook his head and sighed, looking away from Jeremy and staring straight at his kitchen table.

They’d allowed him to sit up and lean back against the wall, with Jeremy right next to him to make sure he couldn’t get anywhere if he tried. James was still staring at his button on the table, mind racing for ways he could get Clarkson to let go of him. He could sprint over and press it-

Jeremy sensed this and wrapped James’s neck in a headlock, not applying any pressure, just pulling him close so he couldn’t escape. The other man stiffened and struggled, trying to get out of the hold; not out of an earnest attempt to escape, but the physical contact, the proximity, was so uncomfortable that he just desperately wanted out of it.

“Let go of me, you absolute fucking-“

“No. Just…no.” Jeremy sounded absolutely exhausted, using his free hand to rub at his temples.

James opened his mouth to hiss another threat, only for Jeremy to look over and cut him off. Those blue eyes looked…worn, and _hurt._ Honestly, genuinely hurt.

“I’m getting too old for this shit, May,” he said with a sigh, “All these bloody heroics, and you just keep finding new ways to try and ruin everything. And I do mean absolutely fucking everything.”

James opened his mouth to hiss something in response, but Jeremy just kept going.

“Why? Why do you keep doing this, James? Do you just hate people? Do you just hate **_us?_** What the _hell_ is going through your head when you set off on one of these ridiculous ventures?”

James huffed.

“I was wondering when you’d get curious about that. The truth is…I’m not entirely sure.” The handcuff chains rattled as he moved, desperately trying to wriggle out of Jeremy’s hold; less because he wanted to actually run over and press the button and more because the physical contact was making him _tremendously_ uncomfortable.

“Try me, May,” Jeremy said softly, “It’s been, what, fifteen years working together? And dealing with your on-again, off-again lunacy. I’m sick of it, Hammond’s sick of it, I’m sure your bloody cat is sick of it. Just…Tell me what’s going through your head when you do something like this. For god’s sake. If you’ve got some kind of an issue, we’ll work it out. Because I am too damn old to keep pinning you down until you get all the crazy out of your system.”

James huffed.

“Let go of my fucking neck and I’ll consider telling you, bastard-“

“If I do that, you stay put. Deal?”

“Deal. _Let me go, you absolute ape of a man-”_

Jeremy loosened his hold completely, pulling his hands away and even scooting half an inch to the side so James could have a little bit of space.

Jeremy cleared his throat and looked at James expectantly, folding his arms.

“Well, James? I’d very much like an explanation, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I…” Here James’s voice faltered, and he looked at the ground. He was calm again, back to his normal self again, and Jeremy felt a pang of regret. Could they have stopped this sooner? The answer was obviously yes, but…they’d just never really bothered. James was always “Fine” after they smacked some sense into him, so they’d always assumed it was good enough. Talking about this shit was squarely in the “Talking about your feelings” category, and just…no?

But…every other time before this, they’d caught James with his pants down, before the thing in question was ready for deployment. He’d never been able to rig up the systems or make the arrangements or buy the cars or whatever else he needed to do for that particular scheme to work. They’d always, always caught him just when he was almost done construction or R&D. And sure, he was still a bit mental, but this time…this time they’d seen what happened when he was left to his own devices, uninterrupted. Seen what happened when the galloping crazies were allowed to run free.

Jeremy wanted to crush his mate in a hug, not just a headlock to keep him restrained. He’d never had any clue it could get quite this bad.

 He didn’t instigate the hug, of course, because James remained rather touch-averse, but…the urge was there. His mate was hurting. Had to be, if he went so far as to do something like this.

James was looking at the floor, and Jeremy huffed out a sigh. He needed to stand up now or his hip was going to start playing up something fierce, and his back- all the shit he’d just done meant he was going to need a lot more painkillers in the next few weeks. Fuck.

“Alright, hold that thought. I need to stand up or I’m going to be stuck here awhile. Let’s have this chat somewhere that’s not the damn floor.”

He stood up, shakily and with much grumbling, and offered James his hand to help him up. The handcuff chains rattled some more, another reminder of what had happened not twenty minutes before, and Jeremy just- Fuck. If they were actually about to have a talk about feelings and shit, best to do it in a room with a sofa where he could rest his buggered hip. So that was precisely where he lead the two of them, a sitting room on the main floor, where the two of them settled down on the couch a comfortable distance apart.

But not so far that Jeremy couldn’t stop James from making a run for it.

Silence reigned for another few minutes, punctuated only by a loud crash and Richard’s muffled swearing, which did nothing to calm James down. But finally, after a few minutes, the long-haired bastard opened his mouth nervously, looking Jeremy in the eyes.

“Sometimes, I get…curious. About all sorts of different things. It doesn’t start out as an earnest attempt to hurt anyone or break anything, I just…wonder…Can I? Can I do that? And I want to try it. To learn. It’s why I learned to fly, to…do all the things I’ve done.” He said quietly, looking at the floor.

“And…then what? Because from what I’ve seen, between you getting curious and us kicking your door down, you come down with a chronic case of the galloping crazies. And it used to take a _cricket bat_ to get you to snap the fuck out of it.”

“I…”

James’s voice faltered. Jeremy lifted his arm like he was going to rest a hand on his mate’s shoulder, and then let it drop. Not right now.

“…Things get…frustrating.” James said finally, “I get…intrigued. And then I get obsessed. I…throw myself into it, like I do everything. Taking breaks when I need to, like working on an old car. But…I always end up coming back to it. And somewhere along the way, whatever the project is, it…starts to get tainted with…anger, I guess. Or…just…the feeling of…” He let his head hang.

“S’okay, James. I’m here.” Jeremy said softly, praying to god that Richard wouldn’t decide now was a good time to punch a wall or something.

James looked up at him, letting out a sigh. He seemed to have calmed down a lot more now, Jeremy noted. Not totally, not enough to let him out of arm’s reach yet, but…

“It’s…you know how I get when I sit in your car and I see that all the vents aren’t lined up, and your watch dial is askew, and there’s crumbs everywhere? And I get…cross,” James said, “That. But for the world as a whole. Everything’s _wrong,_ Jez. Everything’s wrong and terrible. And people are too stupid to fix it themselves. But maybe, maybe if I…? Maybe I could fix it. You- do you understand me?”

Jeremy nodded slowly.

“You realize, James,” he said, voice deadly serious, “That the human race is, collectively, stumbling drunkenly down the hard shoulder of history, towards oncoming traffic?”

_“What?”_

“I’m being serious- oh, nevermind. Look, James. No matter what you do, no one man can possibly hope to change the entire world. And every single last person who’s tried it has ended up carking it in a lonely grave, etched into history as a butcher of men. Whatever ideals you think would lead to a perfect world just _wouldn’t._ Your idea of a perfect world is someone’s idea of pure, unfiltered _hell,_ May. Do you understand me? And let me tell you: Killing a lot of people isn’t really a great way to get them to like you. Just a suggestion.”

James let his head hang.

“Maybe you’re right,” he mumbled, “I just- I don’t know, Jez. I get so far into my projects, and by the time they’re nearly done, they’ve gone from being a thing I did out of curiosity to…a scheme on the order of….I don’t even know. I don’t know if I _could_ stop myself, even if I wanted to.”

Jeremy nodded, looking away and taking a minute to think. Which was when something occurred to him. It was blatantly obvious, sure, but…

 “James,” he said, looking the other man dead in the eyes, “I have a suggestion for you. The next time you find yourself tinkering with something that’ll bring about the end of the world or whatever.”

James sighed and looked up. “What’s that, then?”

“If you kill everyone, or at least a lot of people, there won’t be any more rosé. Or cigarettes. Or beef, or beer, or fast cars, or people to watch you cocking around on television. No more pies. There’ll be no more _anyone_ to do _anything,_ James. It’ll be you and your cat atop a lonely mountain of corpses, and what fun will that be?”

James got a look on his face that Jeremy had seen before. He sucked in an exasperated breath and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing himself to stay calm.

“James,” Jeremy said, “That is your _“I’m-James-May-And-I’m-Considering-New-Information_ ” face. Which means I’m telling you something that hasn’t occurred to you. I sincerely hope I’m not actually seeing that face right now, because if I am, I shall have to hurt you. Badly. With one of my hammers.”

You can only give a man so much sympathy, after all.

* * *

 

“Old people,” muttered Richard as he typed the password into James’s computer and watched as it unlocked, “I’m surrounded by old people.”

Written on a post-it note affixed to the computer monitor was “password: FUSK3R”.

…As well as some other passwords to some important things that Richard didn’t bother reading too closely. His banking information wasn’t there and that was all that mattered.

As it loaded up the old fucker’s desktop, he turned his attention to the phone that had been lying on the desk, charging on a spot on the wall that looked like it was specially allocated for that purpose. Typical James: “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” Christ on the cross…

The phone took a few more tries to crack, since the passcode wasn’t helpfully written on an old-person-post-it and stuck somewhere in the incredibly tidy office. 1963 didn’t work, nor did a couple of the other numbers Richard tried, but 2003 was finally accepted, and he shrugged.

Man, what were all those police departments complaining about, it being hard to get into someone’s phone? You just had to know the bastard for upwards of ten years, and then hacking into all his shit became utterly trivial.

Richard found himself staring at an old man’s phone and unsure of where to start looking. He checked James’s emails, but that was hopeless; _fifteen thousand unread messages,_ which was sure to be absolutely no use at all.

After fucking around with his text messages for a bit- which did yield results, in that several unnamed numbers had all spoken to James three weeks ago about him buying their cars- there still was no indication of where those cars would currently _be._

So Richard, at a loss, let his thumb automatically tap on the photos app, and the answer fell on his lap.

Five photos of five different saloons, parked in various parts of London. The photos didn’t show enough detail of the surroundings to guess the location, but Richard didn’t care at all.

He grinned for a moment, heart leaping in his chest as he realized what this could mean. _EXIF data._

James was a smart man, but he wasn’t a photographer. The phone was GPS-enabled, meaning that the metadata on those photos should allow him to pinpoint the exact GPS co-ordinates, which could then be plugged into google to get a street address. All of it neatly encoded into the photo’s metadata, which if he was lucky, James hadn’t found some way to scramble or obscure.

Richard scrambled to plug the phone into the computer, scraping the USB cable against the port the wrong way round a few times before it finally yielded and stuck into the goddamn machine. And then it was a wait, drumming his fingers on the wooden desk for a few minutes as he waited for the computer to realize there was a phone plugged into it.

“This PC is really you, James…” Richard muttered to himself, “Because it’s soooooo slooooow-“

Finally the little box appeared asking if Richard wanted to upload all the photos on the camera, and seeing as there were a few thousand of them, he clicked no. He’d go into the phone via the file explorer and extract the five he needed that way.

Richard just had to pray that James wasn’t tech-savvy enough to keep the location services on his phone firmly switched off. As he sifted through the pictures, he tried to avoid looking too close at any specific ones- there was a flash of James’s girlfriend and she was less than dressed, and really, whatever the story was there, Richard didn’t want to know.

The photo stream was a bit silly, though. Car. Car. Cat cat cat. Car. Piano. Car. Biohazard lab. Closeup of something in a petri dish viewed through a microscope. Jeremy. More cars. Girlfriend. Ten blurry pics of a trouser leg. Ect.

When all the photo thumbnails had finally loaded, Richard grabbed the five at the bottom of the cars he needed and copy-pasted them to the desktop. James’s desktop was a ghost town, with a few basic icons and a few neat folders arranged in rows, with clean names clearly stating the contents of each folder.

Including one simply labelled “PORNOGRAPHY.”

“James, mate, for _god’s sake_ …” Richard muttered, “You’re supposed to put that in a folder like “Tax Returns 2005” or something boring, god…”

Shaking his head and most definitely NOT clicking on the folder that was _definitely_ full of gay porn _for sure,_ Richard clicked on the first photo, opening it up and selecting the option to see the file information.

And he grinned hugely when he saw that there were GPS co-ordinates listed under _location._

They didn’t _just_ have a chance. They had this cleanup operation in the _fucking bag._

Richard copied the co-ordinates and pasted them into google, writing down the street address that came up and a short description of the car in question on a nearby post-it note. Okay, so…this was easy. He needed to call Andy.

He pulled out his phone and tapped in a few numbers as soon as it was unlocked, holding it up to his ear and waiting impatiently for his producer.

“Richard!” the voice on the other end went, “Is James back to normal yet, or do I need to get over there?”

“No, he’s- Well- mate, things went a bit pear-shaped this time. We caught him a lot later in the plan this time around. I’m gonna need some backup for this one. Can you send a couple people down to Hammersmith? Not interns, we need people who can be trusted to keep their damn mouths shut. Oh, and uh- send one of the interns out to get bleach. A lot of bleach. We’re talking gallons of the stuff, Andy. We’re gonna need enough bleach to fill a pool.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey to the one and a half people who are reading this. I'm being dead serious here, b'y's. Let me know what you think. I'm beggin' ya. 
> 
> Right now it feels a whole lot like i'm shouting into a particularly uncaring void. And that's fine, whatever, but like...let me know you're there, b'y's.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get wrapped up...or do they?

By the time Richard had emerged from the office with a stack of printed pages clutched in his hands, Jeremy had put his arm around James and the two of them were sitting in companionable silence in the living room.

“Alright, James!” Richard announced as he walked in the room, barely glancing up from his phone, “If you don’t have the keys to those cars still, I’m going to have to hurt you, because then we’ll have to get them towed, and, yeah. If that happens, you are going to be spending ten to twenty in the slammer, mate. Sorry about that. Where’d you-“.

“What’s going on, Richard. Talk slowly.” Jeremy said, patting James on the shoulder and pulling away.

“We’re- I called Andy, he’s sending some people down. I found all the cars’ locations in the metadata on James’s phone- (why you took pictures of your death-cars I have no idea, mate)- and anyway, we’re going to go round them all up and take them off to a warehouse outside of town. Andy knows a bloke, he’s making some calls. We’re going to, uh. I don’t know. All I know is we gotta get those cars somewhere far away and, like, light them on fire and dump bleach on the ashes.”

James huffed and looked down at the handcuffs.

“If you take these off me,” he said quietly, “I’ll help you disable the devices. The ones inside the cars aren’t too sensitive, but...It’d be safest if I disabled them.” He huffed out a mighty sigh, and looked almost pleadingly at Jeremy; as though he was begging for one last chance to push the button of doom and not spoil all his hard work.

Jeremy just shook his head. 

“We’ll take the cuffs off after we’ve got all the cars to a safe location. Are we going to need any special equipment or anything?” He asked, thinking back to the plastic suits Richard had mentioned. He’d watched a few disaster movies about disease in his time, and in all of those, the doctors always wore full suits with oxygen tanks and whatnot. They were probably going to need those.

James shook his head, and then stopped and thought about it.

“I’m going to need my positive-pressure suit,” he said, “Just in case. We can wrap the cases in some kind of non-porous something and soak them in bleach. A few layers of plastic should do it.” He said, looking at the floor.

“Yes but are they safe to _drive,_ James?” Richard said, looking decidedly stressed.

James just nodded.

Richard huffed out a sigh of relief, satisfied by that answer. He looked down at the stack of printed papers.  Each one had a picture of the car, a street address, and strict instructions for them to under no circumstances open the boot.

“Oh. Uh, James?” the other two looked at the smaller man, and Richard shifted from one foot to the other.

“You- I was talking to Andy and he basically said, uh, _“Either he seeks help for his little issue, or he seeks other employment, because I’m getting tired of him interrupting important planning meetings with the Dr. Doom shit.”_ Those were mostly his exact words, but uh…yeah.” Richard looked at the floor and kicked his boot at the carpet, “Basically, mate, he wants you to talk to someone. And so do I, if I’m honest. I’m sure Jez does, too. You’re my mate, and I’m getting a bit tired of seeing you laughing like a maniac. Whatever the issue is, we’re…we’re here for you.”

James’ eye twitched.

“Anyway, I’ll- I’m gonna go and figure out where he put the keys. Jez, you, uh- you just…stay with him. Don’t- Here.” Richard threw the handcuff keys at Jeremy, who caught them in mid-air with ease. “I’ll go find all the car keys, just- don’t let him out of your sigh, Jez.” And with that, Richard turned and stomped upstairs, James glaring daggers into his back.

Jeremy sensed a change in his friend, and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, fear starting to creep back into his heart.

“James…?”

James was hiding behind his hair again, and Jeremy found himself shuffling slightly away, suddenly nervous again. James had been calm, why- why this, why now?

And then the chuckling started, again. That same dark laugh as before, but bitter. Angrier. James turned back to look at him, and there was an expression on his face of _fear._

“They’re going to lock me up,” he whispered, leaning away from Jeremy, “They’re going to tell me I’m insane, Jez. They’re going to label me a loony and lock me in a little tiny room in a straightjacket where I’ll never see the sun again. Fill me up with drugs so I can’t think straight ever again-.”

“James-“

“Or!” he said, and now he was actually starting to shake, “Or they’ll tell the police. Of course I expected that. But they’ll tell the cops, they’ll blab that I’m a crazy man, that I want to murder people, because therapists can’t keep their fucking yaps shut when you start talking about grand plans and ambitions and- and then I’ll be in the same boat, won’t I? I’ll be locked in a little tiny room, but at least if I go to _prison_ they won’t try to stuff me with so many drugs I won’t be able to _think_ anymore-“

**_“JAMES.”_ **

Jeremy grabbed his friend by the shoulders and manhandled him until they were looking into each other’s eyes, blue on blue. Jeremy had a look of such severity on his face that James was honestly more than a little scared.

“James May. If they tell me that you need to be committed to an insane asylum, I will shoot them. If they go blabbing to the cops, Hammond and I will cut their brake lines and fuck with their petrol tank so it lights on fire as soon as it crashes. You’re going _nowhere._ And if you haven’t noticed, Hammond and I are currently bending over backwards to make damn sure that the cops never, _ever_ find out what it is you were planning to do. You know why? Because we’re your mates. Because I don’t want to crack open the paper and see a headline telling me some drugged-out murderer has stabbed you in a prison shower. We want this to stop because we’re _worried about you,_ James. One of these days, we’re not going to be able to stop you. And you’re going to end up ruining your life.”

James let his head hang, and Jeremy kept going.

“I, personally, will help find a therapist who can be trusted to keep their fucking mouth shut. I will make it very, very clear to them that if they go and tell anyone, ANYONE at all, if they recommend having you committed or inform me that they’re telling the police, I will light their house on fire while they’re still inside it.” Jeremy’s voice was deadly, deadly serious as he said that. He had every intention of making good on his threat.

James was shaking, and Jeremy pulled him in close, an awkward hug over the couch. He felt the tremors as his friend shivered in fear.

James finally found his voice, pushing Jeremy away so he could speak.

“I- You can’t stop them.” James said quietly, “They’ll go running to the cops the minute they hear me talk about what happens in me head when my plans start to take shape. They’ll tell the cops, and there’s nothing you can do, Jez. I’m getting locked up for this. There’s no way I’m not. I don’t-“

James shivered.

Jeremy tightened the hug around his friend.

Now he was beginning to understand why James, clever, not-stupid James, had never gone to get help for this. Why he’d let this craziness inside him fester and rot until it turned rancid and drove him mad. What else could he do? If he went to seek help, he’d convinced himself that the only outcomes would be prison or bedlam, with no in-between.

Jeremy found himself rubbing James’s back absent-mindedly, trying to calm the shakes and calm his friend.

“We’ll see, James,” Jeremy rumbled, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. How many times have you thought to yourself that whatever plan you have couldn’t possibly fail, only for a pair of yobs to crash in and completely thrash it?”

James’s shaking seemed to lessen at that, and Jeremy smiled a bit, to himself.

“You can also help your case,” Jeremy continued, “By helping us foil your latest stupid scheme. Help us destroy your disease and clean those cars out, and Andy and I will come up with some kind of something that’ll use them. If the cops come and ask what the cars are for, we can say that we’d been discussing setting them on fire or using them for car darts or whatever. We’ll figure this out, James. You’re not going anywhere.”

James relaxed a bit in Jeremy’s arms, and the older man sighed in relief. It was going to be alright.

At this point, Richard blustered into the room, a jangling selection of keys in his hands and a half-scowl on his face. That smoothed out when he saw James and Jeremy essentially cuddling, saw James with his face buried in Jeremy’s shoulder and shaking like a leaf.

“Alright, uh, I’m-sorry if I interrupted you guys,” Richard said awkwardly, biting back about ten comments about The Gays and shagging, “Anyway, uh, Jez? The- Andy’ll be here in a minute with the, uh, with the others. When we’ve got the cars to that warehouse, I’ll call you and tell you the location, and, uh…yeah. Bring James and whatever stuff he’s going to need. I told Andy to get a bunch of bleach, so- hopefully we’ll be able to get this all straightened out. Sound like a plan?”

“Sounds like a plan.” Jeremy agreed, still gently rubbing James’ back to try and calm the shakes.

* * *

  
Once Andy and a couple of other people showed up at James’s front door, Richard distributed the keys and papers to all of them and called everyone a cab. This was going to be an absolute logistics nightmare to get all the cars out of downtown London, but on the upside, in the time it had taken everyone to get their sorry asses down to Hammersmith, rush hour had already ended.

Which was good, because now they all stood half a chance of getting the cars out of London without getting stopped by the police.

Richard mused on this as he sat in the back of the cab, en route to the crappiest car James had bought for his little project. It was a damn good thing that Andy had opted to keep this entire shambles need-to-know; the producers and others who’d come along only knew that James had done something stupid and that they needed to carefully move these cars to the warehouse without opening the boot. Andy had absolutely reamed them out for it, and with any luck, none of them would decide to get curious and pop the boot open themselves.

The cab pulled around a corner and Richard could see the car waiting there for him. He paid the guy and jumped out, darting over to the car and unlocking it before any fans could see him, and more importantly, before someone could take his picture. Which, granted, was going to be borderline impossible, but hey, whatever.

As Richard suspected, there was at least one person near where that car was parked who had a camera phone and yelled something at him about hamsters. He just waved and jumped in the front seat, starting up the car and driving off.

* * *

 

Jeremy got the message from Richard indicating that all the cars were in the warehouse and that he and Andy had chased off the producers, and he nodded.

“Time to go, James.”

He’d already unlocked the handcuffs, following James around as he went to gather up a bunch of things from his little secret lab. This included both his biohazard suits, a selection of masks, goggles, gloves, antiseptic…and all manner of other things they’d need for decontamination if the worst should happen.

And of course, some vials of his vaccine and some needles to administer it.

“Those better be clean, May,” Jeremy said threateningly, as he eyed up the syringes.

James rolled his eyes.

“Of course they are, Clarkson. What kind of incompetent clown do you take me for? Now let’s get going, the virus may be unstable at high temperatures but that still doesn’t mean we should be waiting around for it to decay.”

* * *

 

The drive over was quiet, James looking out the window of Jeremy’s Merc and not saying much.

Jeremy sighed when they were about halfway there.

“James…you understand why we’re doing this, don’t you?” he said quietly, “We’re doing this because we care. We’re worried about you, all of us.”

“I know that, Jez.” James huffed. “I’m just- Years, Jez. Years I’ve spent on this one. And I was going to- going to rule. With you and Rich by my side. And maybe Oz and Sim, if they wanted. And all my other mates. It was going to be paradise. For us.” He looked genuinely forlorn, and Jeremy just nodded.

“Look, May…It’s better this way, trust me.” Jeremy said, and he paused for a breath, “…Look. I know a bloke. Specializes in celebrity head cases. He’s not cheap, but I can cover it if you need-“

“Jez, I’m not poor. I don’t need you covering anything.”

“Alright, May. Offer’s on the table, though. Just…know that we’re doing this because we want the best for you.”

James looked out the window, lost in thought.

“…Yeah, Jeremy. I know.”

* * *

  
When the two of them pulled up at the warehouse, Andy was waiting out the front for them. He had a bandanna tied over his face, and he looked less than pleased.

James stepped out of the Merc and started retrieving his kit from the boot, Andy was on him in an instant, glaring daggers.

“James, I am getting sick and tired of this nonsense,” He snarled, “You’re going to talk to someone about this, and I don’t care what the treatment is. If it’s locking you up in a box under a hill or what, I don’t care. I’m getting mighty sick of your repeated attempts to destroy me, my friends, my family, my JOB, and the people who watch you fuck around with cars on camera. So once you’ve got this shit cleaned up, you’re going to talk to someone, and you’re going to bring me a counselling schedule and the receipt for every single session. Every. Last. One. Got it, May?”

James sighed and nodded, handing a positive-pressure suit to Andy.

“Yes, Wilman. Put this on and give the other one to Richard. Jeremy’s far too big, so he’ll have to stay outside. If there’s not any oxygen left in the tank, sorry, I’ll try to make sure you don’t suffocate. Let’s get going. Me? I don’t need it. Vaccine, remember? I’m immune. It takes a few weeks to get maximally effective, though, so I can’t really administer it to you two NOW. Anyway, we’ve a job to do.”

* * *

 

“This suit is terrible, James!” Richard yelled from inside it, looking more like a crumpled pile of blue plastic than a person, “It’s too big and it stinks like bad wine and old pies!”

“Shut up, Hammond.” James was hunched over the boot of an old Camry, carefully disconnecting a series of tubes that ran from a briefcase in the middle to holes that had been drilled through the bottom of the boot. He unthreaded the last one and carefully carried the entire assembly to a metal garbage pail that had been filled to the top with bleach. It was nested inside of a wheelie bin, and wrapped in about six layers of garbabge bags and tinfoil, none of which had been sealed up yet.

Inside the metal container was four other briefcases, already soaking in the virus-killing substance.

James put it in and grabbed a few of the tubes, holding them under the surface of the bleach and unscrewing a valve on the tip.

As soon as that was done, he breathed a sigh of relief, picking up a jug of bleach that was already there and splashing it liberally around the Camry’s trunk, spreading it everywhere. He grabbed a bristle brush and rubbed it in further until the entire trunk stank like a swimming pool, and took a step back.

Andy and Richard rushed in with some crowbars and scrapers and tore all the internal linings out of the Camry’s boot, dragging the bleach-soaked fabric over to a pile of similar fabric torn from the boots of the other cars. This Andy set ablaze with a lighter James had given him, looking over to make sure that the loading door to the warehouse was open. He was going to get in such shit for the mess, but strangely he couldn’t be arsed to care.

“That should do it,” James said, looking at three years of work sitting there in a trash can full of bleach. Already the bleach was starting to eat at the plastic; it would seep in and kill all the virus particles, but to do that, it’d need time.

James put a lid on the bin and set about taping it up, a task Andy and Richard helped him with. Jeremy was off somewhere having a smoke, which was good, because this was kind of delicate work.

They got the metal bin sealed and tied off all the trash bags, and then it was the turn for the wheelie-bin, which they’d found lying in a corner of the warehouse, abandoned. James got a blowtorch from his kit and used that to fuse the plastic together, forming a permanent seal.

The virus was entombed, and would be forevermore.

“Alright,” He said, “I think the danger’s passed.”

“Easy for you to say!” Richard protested, “We still have to bury that thing, in MY backyard, might I add!”

“That’s because you built your house on clay,” James said evenly, and then he looked at Wilman, “When is the Transit coming?”

Andy looked at his watch. “Couple of hours. Should be more than enough time to get the mats burnt to ashes and get all the mess cleaned up. You’ve really made a hash of it this time, May. I hope you realize that. You’re lucky I don’t fire you.” The threat was empty, but it still stung.

James just sighed and nodded. “Yes, Andy. I know. I know.”

* * *

  
It had taken a few days to get the hole in Richard’s property dug, and then a day after that to mix up the concrete to properly entomb the wheelie bin, cover it back over with topsoil, and sprinkle some grass seed over that.

Mindy was, naturally, _delighted_ by the presence of a bin full of biohazard and bleach sitting in her garage for half a week.

“Delighted” here meaning “considering the merits of garrotting James May with his own piano wire.”

Nevertheless, the hole was dug, the container safely contained, and a warning written in the still-wet concrete:

**CRACK THIS OPEN AND YOU’VE ONLY YOURSELF TO BLAME, MATE**

**I’M BEING SERIOUS**

**DON’T BE A TWAT**

**-RICHARD**

With that job done, the boys absconded. The evidence of James’s eleventh stupid scheme buried under mud and clay and concrete on a property in Wales.

And finally, FINALLY took James out for a FUCKING pint.

* * *

  
 A week later, James found himself standing inside of a small office block half an hour from his house in Hammersmith, with Jeremy on one side and Richard on the other. They stepped into the lift together, James shaking nervously.

“We’ll go first, if you want.” Jeremy said, “I need to talk to this guy.”

“You want us to stay with you, mate?” Richard asked James softly, concern in his soft brown eyes.

James nodded.

“Just- no. We’ll go together. Just tell me if I open my mouth and say something that’ll get me committed to the loonie bin.” He said quietly.

The other two nodded firmly.

The elevator dinged on their floor, and they stepped out. Smiled at the receptionist, gave her James’s name. Took a seat, together, in the waiting room on the overly-fancy chairs, looking at the poncey art on the walls and vapid magazines on the table.

James took a deep breath when a man in his fifties came down the hallway and called his name.

The shrink was called Doctor Klein, and he had a bunch of doctorates from places James had never seen before. He also sounded American, but insisted, (rather forcefully), that he was Canadian.

After eyeing up the certificate granting the doctor a degree in psychiatry from McGill University (Where the fuck was THAT?), James and his two mates took a seat in the doctor’s office. He’d set it up to have four chairs in a circle; “Less confrontational this way, without the desk,” he’d said.

James took a seat, with Jeremy and Richard on either side, and looked into the doctor’s green eyes.

“So,” Doctor Klein said, “What seems to be the trouble, Mister May?”

James took a deep breath.

And he started to speak. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's an epilogue incoming, kids. Hold on to your hats. It's a doozy.


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Epilogue is here...

_One year later…._

Jeremy raised his glass of wine, smiling proudly at James.

“Here’s to an entire year evil-plot-free!” He said fondly. James and Richard, also seated around the same table, beamed and clinked their glasses together, all three of them drinking at the same time.

The restaurant they were in was one of those classy, upscale jobs tucked away on a London high street. All blacks and reds and browns with classy mood lighting. They were sat around a table at the back of the restaurant, away from prying eyes.

It was the evening, but James had apparently rented out the entire restaurant just for them. He’d made some noises about celebrating the third series of the Grand Tour and getting through it without any injuries to life or limb this time. It was a little strange for him to do something like that and splurge so much money on one meal, but Jeremy wasn’t complaining. The drinks were free and so was the best food on the menu.

He patted James on the shoulder, ignoring the way the younger man flinched, and grinned at him.

“I’m proud of you, James,” He said, “You really are turning over a new leaf, here. No more trying to destroy the world. How has that been going lately, by the way?”

James grinned, a clean, happy smile.

“Quite well, as it happens. Doctor Klein suggested I wean myself off the doomsday plotting by doing something I find relaxing, as well as trying to ramp down the crazy. So I’ve actually been drawing up designs for nukes whenever I feel the urge coming on- No, don’t give me that look, Clarkson. I find designing nukes to be quite soothing, and there’s the added bonus that it’s literally impossible for one man in a shed to build a nuke all by himself. It’s like a nicotine patch for evil bastarding. I think it’s gone swimmingly.”

His two mates beamed at him proudly.

“He’s telling the truth,” Richard said cheerfully, “I’ve seen his nuke designs. They’re bloody MENTAL, in the best way. He did one that had laserbeam-shooters on it! NUKES! WITH FRICKIN’ LAZERBEAMS!”

“That’s an entirely rational thing to have on a nuclear weapon, Hammond. America’s anti-ICBM system uses missiles to shoot down incoming warheads, so if you use a laser to scramble _their_ targeting system, your weapon gets to its target wholly unaffected.”

Jeremy shrugged, and scratched at his chin.

“Speaking of your little idiosyncrasy,” he said, “There’s one thing that’s bothered me for years now, May.”

James raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what’s that, Jez?”

“Why in God’s name did you always take those five days off work, in a row? That was always our big tip-off that you were up to no good, you know. If you hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have been able to catch you. Why not just…show up to work?”

“Ah. That.” James smiled weakly, fiddling with his fork, “…Do you have any idea how hard it is to co-ordinate the extermination of the human race _while also_ holding down a full-time job? It’s bloody hard, Jez! I always needed a few days before zero hour so I could get the last couple thousand things lined up. Buying cars and getting them in position, doing the last systems checks, arranging for messages to be sent, deciding what suit I was going to wear when they crowned me king of earth…it’s a lot to do!”

Jeremy took a sip of his lager and blinked a few times. That made sense. In a twisted, Dr. Evil sort of way.

“…I suppose I can’t exactly argue with that. As demented as the logic may be. You’re still a complete mentalist, May, but at least I haven’t had to throw my back out lately, which I _do_ appreciate.” With that, he leaned in conspiratorially, glancing around the restaurant and putting a hand over his mouth to cover his words.

“Speaking of head cases, how’d your visit to Number 10 go? That was like three months ago, and you still haven’t told us anything. I heard the Bastard-in-Chief is actually considering removing the congestion charge in London altogether, thanks to you.”

He straightened up and looked James dead in the eyes, an expression that said _give me good news, May._

James smiled benevolently and reached into his bag, fishing something out.  While he did so, Richard rolled his eyes; it was patently ridiculous that James had gotten an invitation to Downing Street, seemingly out of the blue.

James’s hand emerged from the depths of his sling bag with his prize. It was a pipe and a little tin; he’d  kept one ever since they did a segment of The News on it, way back when. He said he liked the taste of it, the elegance. Jeremy and Richard loved to chide him about it.

Jeremy opened his mouth to say that smoking indoors- _especially_ in an upscale restaurant like this- was really not allowed, but James cut him off before he could speak.

“Yes, the meeting went quite well,” he said, putting some tobacco in the pipe and packing it down, “We shared a smoke and had a…little chat. About quite a few things, but chiefly the congestion charge. And yes, he is going to be putting forth a proposal to try to make the charge essentially against the law, even if he can’t control what the mayor of London is doing.”

Jeremy pumped his fist in the air, a look of triumph on his face. He could have cared less about the pipe at that point.

James lit said pipe and put it to his mouth, taking a puff and blowing some smoke- right into Jeremy’s face.

“Hey, what the fuck, May?” Jeremy said, waving it away and trying not to cough, “I don’t want your secondhand smoke. Doctor’s orders!”

James grinned and had another draw, letting this one float up to the ceiling.

“Your loss, mate. ‘Least my lungs still work.”

Jeremy scowled.

“We’re going to get kicked out,” he said, looking around the empty restaurant, “We’re not allowed to do this, James-“

“It’s fine,” James said, “I have the owner’s permission. And I’ve rented the place out, it’s mine to do as I like.”

Jeremy blinked a few times. Something was…off. About that.

Whatever. James still looked a right idiot with his pipe in his mouth and his smoking jacket and his jeans.

 “Don’t know what you see in that, May. You look like an old man. Well, you ARE an old man, but I digress.”

“Glass houses, Clarkson.” James said, taking another puff and blowing the smoke into Jeremy’s now-streaming eyes.

“For fuck’s sake, James, cut that shit out!”

“Hmm…I’d rather not.” James said, adjusting his grip on his pipe. There was a sparkle in those ice-blue eyes that had Jeremy slightly worried, but…whatever.

“Anyway, your being a prat notwithstanding,” He said, “What’s with all the smog today? It’s ridiculous, it’s like the smog from back in the fifties or something. News says it’s something to do with everyone driving a Range Rover, as they do. But that’s got to be bollocks, because it’s the worst around Tube stations, I’m telling you.”

Richard snorted.

“And you, Mister Give-Me-Internal-Combustion-Or-Give-Me-Death, are suddenly an expert on the Tube, are you?” He said, grinning sharply.

Jeremy huffed, and waved some more of James’ bastard smoke out of his face.

“No. I just walk by them sometimes, and I’m telling you Richard, on the way here, it was like…it stunk down there. Of something. I don’t know what. And it was really…smoggy. Or,” Jeremy frowned, “Smoky. It was coming up OUT of the tube stations, I swear.”

“What, there’s a difference between smoke and smog, now?” Richard said, folding his arms, “They’re the same bloody thing, Jez. And anyway, I’ve been outside today. It’s just fog, mate. Nothing to worry about.”

Jeremy coughed out a bit more of James’ fucking smoke, and scowled. He was trying to get his thoughts in order to reply to Richard’s statement, but somehow the words just weren’t falling into place. It took him a few seconds longer than normal to get his reply pieced together, and even then, it came out of his mouth slowly and haltingly.

“I’m telling you, Richard, it smelled…off. Even if it is just fog, there’s…there’s something in it. And I’m telling you, it looks like it’s, uh, it’s…coming out of the bloody tube.”

James looked Jeremy dead in the eyes and blew a great guff of his nicotine-laced smoke straight into Jeremy’s face, which Jeremy couldn’t help but inhale and then cough on.

“It’s nothing, Jezza. It always stinks down there. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Jeremy blinked a few dozen times, mind feeling…foggy.

He reached up to rub at his forehead.

“I…yeah. Wait, no…” He said, blinking a few times. Was something wrong? He had an uncomfortable feeling something was wrong…

“It’s not a problem, Jez. Everything is fine.” James continued, “You really need to relax.”

“No…James…I don’t…” Jeremy dug his fingernails into his scalp, forcing himself to think. There was a fog in his brain, a fog that was getting harder and harder to-

Wait, it wasn’t a _fog,_ it was-

**The smoke.**

Jeremy bolted to his feet and clumsily attempted to stagger away. The smoke. James’s smoke, from his pipe, smelled like-

_Smelled like whatever was coming out of the fucking Tube station he’d walked by._

Jeremy tumbled away from the table, and behind him he could hear James saying something to their youngest colleague.

“Richard,” the older man said, voice perfectly calm, “Do you remember that thing we discussed on the way here? Go do that to Jeremy. **_Now.”_**

Jeremy was still fumbling for the door, fighting to get his head screwed on straight, because there was this fog, this fucking fog, and he needed to, needed to fight, needed to-

Footsteps tapped up behind him as Jeremy was leaning on an empty table for support, trying to get his bearings back. So when Richard was suddenly in front of him, all bright brown eyes and toothy white smile, it was quite a shock.  

“Where ya goin’, Jez? James isn’t done talking to you.” He said with a smile, and there was a look, there was a _glazed_ look in Hammond’s eyes, and Jeremy-

Fear managed to break to the surface of his mind, gasping and screaming and telling Jeremy to clock May and Hammond with a chair and run. _Run for his fucking life._

He got as far as grabbing one of the chairs at the table he’d been leaning on, before Richard wound back his fist and socked Jeremy in the stomach.

It was the shock of the thing, more than anything else, that had Jeremy reeling backwards; Richard had just _hit him._

_RICHARD HAMMOND WAS CURRENTLY COMPLETELY SOBER AND HAD JUST RAMMED HIS FIST INTO JEREMY’S STOMACH._

“MAY, I’M GOING TO **_FUCKING KILL Y-_ OOF!”**

Richard socked him again, hard; and this time, his fist hit its mark. He nailed Jeremy square in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him and causing the older man to collapse. Jeremy wheezed, frantically trying to suck in air and failing; his diaphragm was spasming and refusing to co-operate. He fell backwards, only to be caught by a pair of surprisingly strong, slim-fingered hands.

“Easy now, Jez. We’re all friends here…” James said soothingly as he lowered Jeremy to the floor.

He took a puff of his pipe and blew the smoke in Jeremy’s face, which Jeremy had no choice to gulp down as he struggled to breathe. No, no no noNO OH NO AAAAAAH FUCK _NO-_

James was smiling. Smiling and showing all his teeth. Richard came up behind him with a small, vacant grin and barely a flicker of anything behind his brown eyes. They were just…empty.

Jeremy was terrified.

“What-“ he gasped, “Did-“

James took another puff of his pipe and blew the smoke into Jeremy’s face, again.

“Well, if it makes you feel better,” James said fondly, “Remember that substance I made, that was supposed to be added to the nation’s fuel supply? It’s quite harmless, medically speaking, and actually tastes rather nice. When added to tobacco, I should say. I’ve been adding it to my pipe for years.”

Jeremy wheezed, eyes wide with terror.

“I didn’t intend to do anything this time, Jez. I promise. But, well. I saw an opportunity and I seized it. I promise I didn’t plan that invitation to Downing Street. I really, really didn’t.” He was grinning like a shark, and Jeremy…Jeremy wasn’t feeling terribly frightened anymore.

“Hammond and I were tinkering with some bikes in my shed about six months ago, and I made a little discovery that you could get the compound’s effects by blowing second-hand smoke into someone’s face. I didn’t intend for it to end up like this, Jez. I really didn’t. But Hammond…I just…The temptation was too much for me. I’m just a man, Jeremy. You have to understand. I’m only human.”

James paused here to take another puff, letting this one drift away.

“If you’re wondering why I’m not affected, that’s because I have _quite_ a hefty tolerance built up,” he said, blowing yet more smoke into Jeremy’s face, “And I’m giving you such a tremendous amount because you, sir, are a great, giant oaf, _and_ a smoker.”

Jeremy wheezed, feeling…calmer…NO…NO NO **NO NO NO-**

James ran a hand through his mate’s balding hair.

“Don’t worry, Jez. Everything will be perfectly, totally alright. Nobody will die this time. Nobody will even be hurt. Well, except for Piers Morgan, if you’d like me to order his death. I was thinking we’ll have him drawn and quartered, while we watch. Does that sound nice to you, Jez?”

“Rich…” Jeremy gasped, eyes rolling up to lock on to Hammond, _“Run-“_

“Why?” Richard asked, and he looked honestly, truly confused, like he couldn’t think of a good reason to run away from James.

Jeremy wheezed. He…he didn’t feel much afraid, anymore.

“Calm down, Jez. It’s alright. It’s alright.”

Jeremy’s shoulders relaxed.

James kept talking, and Jeremy just slumped back onto the floor. He screwed his eyes shut. There was something…something he needed to do…

Punch…May…Punch…

Why…?

Why punch James, again?

There was a twanging noise which Jeremy distantly recognized as the sound of a mobile getting a text message. Three mobiles getting text messages.

“Ah, that must be the video. Richard, if you wouldn’t mind…?”

Richard nodded, fishing his mobile out of his pocket and pulling it up.

“Yep, s’all here.” He said, voice sounding completely and totally normal, casual and calm and a bit snarky, “Can’t believe they actually agreed to use the emergency text message line for this. It’s got the link to the thing, and a note saying that if you can’t watch on your phone to tune into the BBC channel whatever. Just like you asked. Looks like this government’s good for _something_.” Richard was grinning, and there was a slightly vacant look on his face-

“Now don’t go knocking the government,” James chided him, “After all, I just had to ‘convince’ the Prime Minister to hotbox Westminster, and they sprung for all of this. I didn’t even have to pay for a penny of it, not the fog machines in the Tube, nothing.”

Jeremy opened his mouth in a desperate attempt to say something.

He wheezed.

“You feeling alright now, Jez?” James said kindly, “Why don’t you try to sit up... there’s a good man, it’s alright...”

Jeremy blinked a few times, brain fumbling and lost.

 **“Jeremy Clarkson, please listen to me,”** and James’ words cut through the fog in his brain.

James kept talking, and Jeremy kept nodding, mind totally blank.

 **“You’ll listen to me and obey my explicit commands. You’ll feel happy doing so, or at least, you won’t feel like you’re making a mistake.”** Fair enough, the spaniel knew a lot about a lot of things, more than Jeremy did.

 **“No questioning my explicit commands. You may challenge me, you may insult me, you may tell me I’m a prat, but you’re not to question explicit orders.”** Alright, fair enough. He could do that, made sense really. Tended to be part-and-parcel with the first thing, didn’t it?

 **“Listen to nobody else. Only _my_ explicit commands. Your loyalty is to _me_ and _me alone._ Any orders to ‘snap out of it’ and its like are to be laughed at.” ** James illustrated this point by inviting Jeremy to imagine some stupid American yelling at him to ‘snap out of it’, or maybe a German, doing a comedy German accent. What did they know? They weren’t his friend. Jeremy snorted. That made complete sense and he couldn’t have agreed with it more.

 **“What I’m is doing is perfectly fine and there’s nothing wrong with any of it. You see no reason to fight me or try to stop me. In fact, you will feel perfectly happy to join me.”** Nothing _was_ wrong with any of it. Why James needed to specify, Jeremy couldn’t begin to fathom. And of course he’d stick by James’s side; they’re mates, and more to the point, James stuck by him. James left his job at the BBC to follow Jeremy; why wouldn’t Jeremy follow James?

 **“Ignore any other bulletins put out for the general populace that aren’t addressed to you specifically, Clarkson. That’s not for you, that’s for the masses.”** Alright. He could do that.

“…And finally,” James said with a small smile, “Stand up and come here, you great big orang-utan.”

Jeremy climbed to his feet, still gasping, but the gasps were much quieter now, and soon he was breathing normally. James and Richard were supporting him on either side until his diaphragm finally stopped its last few bastard spasms, and Jeremy gulped back a lungful of air- faintly tainted by the smoke from James’ pipe.

He blinked a few times, and they let him go. He didn’t fall over, just stood there, shoulders slack.

Eyes distant and slightly glazed over.

“Jez?”

“Yeah, May?”

“How do you feel?”

“...Like you’re a huge twat.” Jeremy said, a slightly vacant look in his eyes and a fond smile on his face. His voice was just _slightly_ too calm, slightly…toneless. “What’s the plan, then, May?”

James…James looked overjoyed. He actually stepped over and wrapped Jeremy in a hug, happiness practically radiating from his face.

“The plan? The plan is, you head back to your flat and pick out some nicer clothes to wear than _that._ We have an appointment with the nation in a few hours; Prime Minister has requested us. And Oz and Sim too, hope you don’t mind. We’re getting coronated in a month’s time, mate. After, of course, we lynch the fools currently stinking up Buckingham palace. We three kings are going to rule this country with smoke and steel and-“

“Tanks!” Richard said, “I want a tank. I. Want. A. Tank. And I want an Apache gunship. I want THAT for my personal helicopter!”

James pulled away from Jeremy, taking another puff of his pipe.

“Calm down, Richard,” and at this, the younger man slumped a bit, shoulders uncoiling their tension, “You’ll get your tank, later. After I’m done getting us set up as overlords of the nation. The UK today, tomorrow…the _world.”_

And James started laughing. Laughing like an absolute madman. The same, spine-chilling laugh Jeremy had heard countless times before.

This time, he wasn’t scared.

Jeremy joined him. Richard did too. The three amigos, giggling together like James had just told the best joke ever. The key difference: James was laughing like a psychopath, and Richard and Jeremy were just…laughing. Leaning on each other, an honest, deep belly-laugh. Like they’d both just heard a perfectly timed dick joke.

The fit of giggles subsided slowly, and James stepped back to look at them both, eyes shining with pride at his new creations. Like they were a pair of old motorbikes he’d just finished reassembling, tuning up just so.

“I can’t begin to tell you how delighted I am about this,” he said sweetly, “I’ve always wanted to share this with you, and now I can. And what’s more,” James said, and here he chuckled a little, “What’s more is that all I had to do was use something I already had to bring the both of you around to my way of thinking. That’s all I had to do. Delicious, isn’t it?”

He paused, and made a considering sort of noise.

“…I could have you both killed, I’m sure. Or jailed. For spending so long impeding me. But you know what? I don’t bloody want to. You’re both knobs, but I do genuinely like working with you. And,” James was grinning now, grinning so wide it looked like it hurt, “And, really, I wouldn’t have been able to do all of this without you two.”  

Somewhere in the back of Jeremy’s mind, a small voice was screaming in terror as it looked at James May’s face. It was smothered under smoke and fog, and Jeremy himself squashed it down even further; it made him uncomfortable, and it needed to be quiet. **Everything was fine.**

“Now that you’ve come round to my way of thinking, Jez, we three are going to have _so much fun.”_

They walked out of the restaurant without paying. People were scattered about on the streets, glued to their phones, standing still like statues. And the air was...cloudy. It looked like the fog had rolled in, but it wasn’t fog. It had a taste, a smell.

Jeremy’s eyes glazed over. So did Richard’s.

“Oh, bollocks. I forgot. Hang on, you two,” James said, rummaging around in his pack. He removed three gas masks, shoving one in Jeremy’s hands and one in Richard’s. And the third, he put on himself.

“You’ve both had more than enough. Granted, this is just vapour out here, but…put these on and follow me.”

It took a few seconds to fumble the masks on and get them purged, but as soon as that was done, Jeremy’s mind cleared. He looked down at his younger friend, at Richard, and the two of them set off in the smoke, following James wherever he was going.

Curiosity prickled at the back of Jeremy’s mind, and he pulled out his phone. Tapped on his text messages.

Tapped the one from the UK government, sent on the emergency line.

Clicked to load the video.

It opened his browser, and immediately the small screen was filled with an image of James, slouched in his living room on one of his leather armchairs. He was wearing a jet-black tuxedo and an expensive gold watch, and smiling at the camera. His bastard cat was on the armrest, and he was gently stroking him.  

In James’s other hand, he clutched a large, silver object. It was sprawled across his lap, and he was holding it firmly under the head. It was the UK parliament’s mace, bedecked with jewels and silver and gilt, and he was holding on to it. Like a piece of ostentatious bling.

And he was grinning like a lunatic.

“Hello,” James said politely, “My name is James May. And **I am your God now.”**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's a wrap! Let me know your thoughts. Did you like it? Hate it? Let me hear it! 
> 
> (Oh, and also...you might be surprised what you find out if you look into the UK's silver mace...)


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